Seat belts have been shown to have great utility in preventing injury to passengers of motor vehicles. Specifically, such seat belts have been proven to accomplish such object by preventing, inter alia, a passenger from moving forward far enough to have his head impact the dashboard or the windshield in an accident.
As is also well documented, children, especially very small children, are more susceptible to such head injury causing impact than adults because, in a collision, a child can be launched from a seat in a missile-like manner toward the windshield without impediment; whereas, an adult at least may have his legs contact the dashboard thereby slowing his velocity toward the impact point.
For this reason, it is extremely important for a child to be securely belted in place at all times when a motor vehicle is in operation. Accordingly, there have been several designs proposed especially for children.
However, a seat belt is of little or no use if the child unbuckles it. Therefore, there have been designs for "child proofing" the seat belt release control. Such child proofing means should balance a need to prevent the child from operating the release control, with the need for the belt release to be operable by an adult in a manner which permits the belt to be quickly released in the event of an accident.
Heretofore known child proofing means have included providing a release control actuating means that is too stiff for a child to operate, by including a key lock mechanism, or by being too complicated for a child to operate.
These known child proofing means have not been entirely successful because, while they may accomplish the object of preventing a child from operating the belt release control, they do so in a manner that interferes with the designed operation of the belt control itself and thus do not perform the afore-discussed balancing in an effective manner.
That is, by including a key lock, for example, the easy access to the release control itself is impaired or by including means that is too stiff for a child to operate, the designed operation of the release control is inhibited.
For this reason, while known child proofing means have been proposed, automobile manufacturers and sellers have been reluctant to include them for fear that the interference with the design considerations of the seat belt release control will be more dangerous than is acceptable.
A still further reason for the limited acceptance of the known child proofing means is that they may be difficult or expensive to manufacture thereby being too expensive to sell to a car buyer.